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Posternoster (Word origin: Latin = “our father”) a type of lift basically comprising open boxes or compartments which move vertically in a perpetual motion loop, transitioning from up-to-down between floors of a building.
“They suit the German character very well❂. I’m too impatient to wait for a conventional lift and the best thing about a paternoster is that you can hop on and off it as you please. You can also communicate with people between floors when they’re riding on one”.
~ Wolfgang Wölflei
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Germans, as the above quote implies, love their posternoster lifts…so much so that in contrast to most elsewhere in the world where they’ve been phased out as obsolescent people-movers, impassioned German civil servants in the 2010s strongly resisted a ban on their public use. The move to outlaw them stemmed from safety concerns and the issue of disability access (and that they are not considered to be “elderly-friendly”)§. The posternoster aficiandos nonetheless continue to treasure this old-fashioned relic of internal transportation, more so because, according to estimates, there are probably fewer than 100 still operational in commercial and government buildings in 2025 (mostly in Germany and Czechia).
As with the sport of (association) football, the posternoster elevator is another English invention wholeheartedly embraced by Germans. British architect Peter Ellis, having patented a device for “an improved lift with two shafts” in 1866, installed the first posternoster lift two years later in Liverpool, UK.
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| Posternoster lift in Stuttgart Rathaus |
Having been around since the 1860s posternoster lifts were not a passing fad. Notwithstanding their utility in being able to handle a higher volume of passengers than a traditional elevator, they are slated for quasi-extinction. A combination of factors: stringent public health and safety and disability regulations, and the duty of care liability upon providers of the service, have consigned the posternoster elevator to the realm of historical and architectural curiosity⁋.
The Posternoster in fiction: the posternoster lift has featured in German and other European literature, most notably in Heinrich Böll’s Murke’s Collected Silences, wherein the eponymous protagonist experiences both the delight and trepidation of travelling in this “quintessentially German form of vertical circulation” (‘Letter: For Böll, the posternoster lift was a satirical device’, Gerald Adler, Financial Times, 15-Apr-2023, www.ft.com).
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❂ “the German penchant for reliability, efficiency and resistance to change” (‘Lovin’ their elevator: why Germans are loopy about their revolving lifts’, Kate Connolly, The Guardian, 14-Aug-2015,
§ cost of maintenance was an added factor
⁋ even the Germans, the posternoster’s biggest fans, ceased manufacturing them in 1974
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